A friend has come to me for advice so I've come to what I hope will be the source of that advice.

As I understand it, when you create a Word document and save it, hovering over its icon will show 'Author' and 'date created'.
If you then modify it and save the change, hovering will also show 'Date Modified'.

If someone else opens, modifies and saves your document, does their name appear as 'Author' or yours? [There can be an innocent reason for such a change - e.g. you become secretary of a club or charity, you open that body's letterhead, change it to show your name and then save it.]

My friend has just opened a folder that contains sensitive documents; everyone of them shows as the author someone else - a stranger - and he's concerned that he may have been hacked.

He's now joined PSI so will be OK for the future but is there any way at all for him to find out if those files have been hacked into?

There are many things that the user can do which includes encrypting the contents. Just a matter of understanding & setting up Word correctly - I check the meta data before release by checking the Prepare For Sharing Option but there are many options for this powerful programme.

Using PSI will not help with this - it checks third party programme files not Document files.

If you hover over any document in a folder or on Desktop, a box appears that shows "Type/Author/SIze/Date Modified".

In this case, the author should have been shown as my friend. He created each of the documents from a 'Word - NEW' template at different times, so the 'Date Modified' should have been different for each document.

But every document shows a stranger's name and the same date.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I thought that it is possible for someone to hack into a poorly or unprotected PC and have the same capabilities as the owner. He & I both assumed that his PC had been compromised, that someone had gotten into the folder and did something, hence the same date & name.

Are you saying that a hacker can't do such a thing, Maurice.

PS He fully understands that Secunia wouldn't spot such a 'break-in' - I recommended it as part of my advice - get a firewall, antivirus, regularly update definitions, use passwords etc. He's like so many PC users - they have nothing like this. He wasn't even aware what would happen with his XP.